Mortgage providers love this trampoline
Including a joke about a yeti, a link to a very funny video and a request for eight pounds
Hello. It is April 2025. This is the twenty-seventh monthly instalment of Interesting Skull, a newsletter of magnificence and fatigue by me, perma-sweaty author Mike Rampton, a man whose body was recently described on the front page of a national newspaper as “ruined”.
FIRST, SOME BUSINESS
Become A Genius In A Year, written by me and illustrated by Gareth Williams, is out on May 22nd from HarperCollins Children’s Books and is a lot of fun. It should hopefully be pretty visible when it comes out — it’s going to be in one of the supermarkets, for instance. It’s currently available for preorder from all the big sites or, if you’re better at talking to people than I am, actual bookshops. I think it’s coming out in America next year. If books are still allowed there, right guys??!!?11/1/??!
YOU WANT BOOKS, I SELL YOU BOOKS
I have set up a page on Bookshop.org selling all my books — as far as I can tell, I get a small percentage of anything purchased through it.
Odds are this is one of those things that’ll make me about eight quid a year, but eight quid is eight quid. Can I have eight quid please? GIVE ME EIGHT QUID. There’ll eventually be loads of books on there. I updated my website the other day but don’t know how much I’m meant to discuss books that aren’t out for ages, so I ended up in quite a huff to be honest.
YOU WANT BOOKS, I WRITE YOU BOOKS
I think — think — I’ve finally agreed to write a joke book. I’m not sure when it’ll be out, but I need to write it over the next few months. It’ll be good. I’ve been preparing for it for, oh, 42 years or so. I’m predicting loads of arguments when I try to fill it with incredibly difficult puns based on things nobody’s ever heard of. Or, just, you know, jokes that are recognisably jokes but not very good. “I’m going to arrange a relaxing experience in Hungary.” “Book a rest?” “No, that’s Romania, you idiot.”
1
What a con this so called “Tennessee Williams” is. There are at least two, Venus and Serena, that are way more tennisy.
2
“I just saw the star of Nosferatu wearing a protective item designed to avoid the wearer acquiring an airborne disease.”
“SARS guard?”
“They're more commonly referred to as Covid masks now, but yes, that's what Lily-Rose Depp was wearing.”
3
“I showed a kleptomaniac percussionist from Trinidad and Tobago my statues of pagan gods.”
“Steel pan?”
“Yes.”
Quite a lot of my jokes can be reformatted to have the punchline “Yes”. One day I’ll get round to my dream project — 100 jokes with the punchline “I’ll kill you” — but maybe not just now. Also, I don’t make a lot of bold claims, but I reckon I’ve written more jokes about the cast of the came-and-went 2024 film Nosferatu than most (I have written two jokes about it).
Hey, it’s the end of the tax year, time for my annual reminder that, for a lot of people, it’s just a given that they’ll earn more money with each year that goes by. That’s like a fairly standard tenet of a lot of careers, in fact. Mad! Weird! They can, like, make plans and stuff! Mortgage providers love this one cool trick!
I have added, theoretically, one more string to my bow by making my ‘giving a talk’ debut, doing events in Cambridge and Cardiff. Seen as one-hour talks they were extremely well-paid, but they didn’t take one hour — I spent weeks panicking about them, catastrophising, writing, rewriting, chasing people, purchasing buckets, visiting printers and staring into the abyss.
They went fine, I think, just about. The Cardiff one was oddly emotional as I have a weird relationship with the place. I love Cardiff but spent a lot of time there at what could reasonably be called ‘a low ebb’, so pratting about with buckets and making kids laugh was slightly cathartic. And the Cambridge one was in a big lecture theatre with some real academics, who were funny and fascinating in a way that came across as effortless, while my sweat-soaked jumping, shouting and rudimentary magic seemed anything but.
But I’ve done it now, and signed some books, and my buckets are in the loft to be deployed again if asked (if there’s one lesson to be taken from my tax return, it’s to not say no to any work), and now my bow has an extra string. This either means I can fire multiple arrows at once or play the violin a bit louder than expected.
4
“I have a new carpet installation person who I vastly prefer to the previous one.”
“Fitter?”
“Oh, good lord, yes, he's a dreamboat.”
5
“My book about the evidence I found in the snow that a Yeti had been nearby has been made available for short-sighted readers.”
“Large print?”
“Yes.”
6
“I've taught a nocturnal African mammal to do a key step in helping me prepare the flour when baking.”
“Civet?”
“No, measuring is the step that I've taught a polecat to do.”
The funniest thing I have ever seen on the internet was a video on YouTube of a man falling off a trampoline. He bounces and tries to do a flip, but his shorts come down mid-flip and his legs get stuck, so he’s flung off at a mad angle with his legs splayed and hits the side of a shed, and for a split second he’s upside down, getting a massive knock to the head, and you can see his testicles, penis, perineum and anus all at the same time. It’s the least dignified moment in human history. You can pretty much see what he had for breakfast. Then he crashes to the floor and doesn’t know what’s happened for a bit, tries to run away round the corner but falls over again and then gets slightly attacked by a dog. It’s so good. The first time I saw it I couldn’t breathe. There was a period of a few years where it would just float into my head at silly times and I’d find myself bent double and weeping in the street at the memory of it.
A reasonable amount of my job involves trying to be funny. Nothing I do will ever be a fraction of one percent as funny as a man falling off a trampoline and briefly presenting his inner workings to the world while crashing into a wall. If I ever have an office (I work at the dinner table), perhaps I’ll put up a large picture of that moment as a constant reminder to dream.
No, hang on, I’ve just imagined what that would look like, and actually I don’t think I’ll be doing that at all.
Although talking of disgustingness, I wrote a piece for the i paper about a report that said married men tended to weigh more than unmarried men. I sent in a picture of my stomach, which is cropped out so I just look really miserable, and despite barely mentioning fatherhood, the front page of the paper teased the piece with “Becoming a dad ruined my body: Babies, not marriage, made me fat”. I’m not fat, but have now been described on the front page of a national newspaper as both fat and ruined.
7
“I wrote a song about my former bandmate while driving — not on a proper road, mind you — in East Anglia.”
“Diss track?”
“No, the song I wrote on a driveway in Fakenham was a heartfelt paean to the good times we had together.”
8
“I’ve written an equation on my private parts because of the feelings I get doing so.”
“Whole sum?”
“No.”
9
I will never tell you the occurrences that take place within my tenth cranial nerve as it interfaces with my parasympathetic nervous system. What happens in vagus stays in vagus.
THE LAST MONTH IN NUMBERS
Ran the Cambridge Half-Marathon and was probably the best one there. Turned 42. Spent two years worth of accrued Waterstones points on a very good book and a card game about animal’s bottom holes. Sat behind a famous comedian on a train. Had a nice chat with a woman who casually revealed she had an OBE. My daughter went on a school trip to Cadbury World, which is amazing — I remember going on a school trip to a sewer. Bought a tiny frying pan just big enough for one egg and have gone absolutely fried egg bonkers. Might finally have learned the lesson about what happens to my body if I eat a whole family-sized bag of sultanas. Built a big fire with the Woodcraft Folk. Might be becoming a trustee of a local charity to build a pump track. Fed some ducks. Wondered if going to the chemist to buy the hay fever tablets Beconase could be described as a Beconaissance mission.
COOL ACTIONS FOR COOL PEOPLE
Buy There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question and/or pre-order Become A Genius In A Year (out on May 22nd), ideally from my Bookshop.org store so I can start accruing millions.
If you’re American, you can pre-order the US version of Silly Question, retitled There Are No Silly Questions (out in October), and why not make a mental note to see, when that turns up, if you can pre-order the American version of Become A Genius In A Year as well.
Next issue: May 2nd.
10
CURRENT READING
What Mr Tyson Will Do If He Loses The Boxing Match by Michael B. Sad
I’m Worried We’ve Not Put Sufficient Stuff In This Church Tower by Isabella Nuff
Tiles, Parquet And Lino by Florence Urfaces
A 1989 James Cameron Film by Thea Byss
What I Put On A Chair by Maria End